Lottery games, or Lotto as it is sometimes called, have gained great popularity in both the United States and abroad. Today, legal lotto games are conducted in most US states and Canadian provinces as well as internationally in many countries. Lotto is a major source of revenues for the states and provinces which sponsor lotteries.
Lotto is a gambling game in which the player must correctly pick a pre-set quantity of numbers to be drawn from a larger pool of numbers. In a typical lotto game, a player fills out a computer coded card(s) with selected number combinations. The card(s) are then presented to an authorized lottery dealer. The dealer issues lotto tickets containing the one or more selected sets that have been generated by a computerized ticket generator and purchased by the player.
Current jackpot games typically include matching six or seven numbers selected from a set of 40 or 50 or more against numbers drawn in a weekly or biweekly drawing. Other Lotto games, for example the so called PICK 3 or PICK 4 games, involve a selection of three and four numbers respectively from a group of (usually) 10 numbers, and matching the selected numbers against daily drawings held by the lottery sponsor.
In another lottery game, raffle, each sold ticket is unique, and the winning tickets are selected in a random draw. This game lends itself to smaller settings, but is also used in national lotteries such as the annual Spanish raffle.
At the time of the jackpot drawing, which is televised in many jurisdictions, the numbers (usually printed on balls) are withdrawn from the total number pool using number selection devices such as air flotation or drum roll. The balls are drawn without replacement, that is, after a particular number is drawn it is not returned to the pool and cannot be redrawn. A preset number of balls forms a winning number combination. If the numbers selected by the player on a particular ticket correspond to the winning number combination, the player wins a cash prize. Currently existing lotto games pay cash awards in instances where a player picks all of the drawn numbers corresponding to a winning number combination, as well as those instances in which a player has picked less than all of the numbers, for example when the player has correctly picked four out of six or five out of six numbers of the winning number combination. Or, in the case of raffle, when one of a player's unique tickets matches one of the drawn tickets.
Lotto tickets are typically purchased in two ways. Initially, players can code up a computer readable card with their number selections. Alternatively, lottery tickets are purchased by players who permit random ticket generators to generate their tickets. Raffle could be put in the second category. The selected number combinations are then transmitted to a central computerized system which stores the selected number combinations, whether coded up by a player or randomly selected by machine. Each of the transmitted number combinations corresponds to a purchased ticket. Alternatively, the wage is placed via a web server on the internet. At the time of the drawing, the central governing authority, which is typically a state contractor, can thereby quickly determine whether one or more jackpot prizes has been awarded, and can further determine the number and distribution of sub jackpot prizes.
Since the winning numbers are picked in a random process the game of lotto is entirely a game of luck. These games are facing competition from other games that involve wagering, such as online poker and live casinos. But they are also facing competition in engaging individuals from activities that don't involve wagering. In particular, internet-based social networks such as Facebook are drawing millions of people into spending several hours per day engaged. Thus it would be desirable for the lotto industry—and the sponsors—to incorporate social network elements into the lotto games themselves.
Adding a social network component to the game of lotto could attract interest to the game and improve the revenues for the sponsors. The game could utilize a pre-existing social network for the purpose of the game or it could build its own social network. Separate social networks can be built easily by leveraging existing social networks and their Application Protocol Interface (APIs) so a player can reach out and solicit their connections to participate in the lotto game.
In order to comply with the laws governing lotteries in the US the new game could still operate very much like existing lotto games such as the ones described above. Tickets could still be purchased at the existing online stores that serve as sales terminals. There would also be a random draw to generate at least a subset of the winning tickets. There will then be an added component where the players are linked together in a social network. Some of the prizes will be based on a players proximity in the social network to one of the winners of the random draw prizes.
Such a game platform would be ideal to recruit new players to the game. It would also create a game where friends will benefit from one another in terms of winning. Whenever someone wins the 1st prize, which is based on a random draw, all his or hers connections in the lotto social network participating in the current game will also win. This will create very compelling “big-win” stories, where little communities, not necessarily geographically based, suddenly have many winners.
The present invention could even be implemented on top of an existing lotto game, where additional prizes are issued based on social network.